Plum Harvest Time

Yellow plums harvested in Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard in 2023

We have three plum trees in Ben Nobleman Park and early in the season, the young fruit start to grow. The plums start off green, then as the fruit matures and ripens in the sun, it turns into sweet, juicy plums with yellow skin.

The problem we have in Ben Nobleman Park is that some park visitors harvest the fruit before it ripens, filling up large bags to take home and turn into some sort of pickled plum dish that can only be made with green, unripe plums.

When we see the visitors there, we ask them not to harvest all the fruit and to leave some of it to ripen on the tree for the rest of the community. Sadly, not everyone is big on sharing. And so most of the fruit on our plum trees vanish before we get to enjoy it.

Volunteers harvesting a plum tree in Ben Nobleman Park with the help of extension harvesting tools.

But, we do have one older plum tree that has high branches that can only be harvested using our extension tools, and so late in July, our volunteers gathered to harvest the slim pickings left on the upper branches of this tree and had a blast.

The volunteers divided up the bounty so that all of those participating could enjoy a handful of plums and they shared with some of the volunteers that couldn’t participate in harvest day. And it was a beautiful experience.

Back in 2009, when we first planted the fruit trees in our park, one of our early volunteers said something profound. We didn’t know how successful the project would be and we had no idea what challenges we would face over the years. But at the time Deb said that we would share the harvest – however big or however small.

And that’s what we do in Ben Nobleman Park. Want to come and join us and help us make our park more beautiful? Email us anytime at growingforgreen (at) gmail.com.

Susan Poizner is one of the volunteers for The Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard in Toronto. She is the creator of the fruit tree care education website OrchardPeople.com.  Susan is the author of four fruit tree care books including Grow Fruit Trees Fast: A Beginner’s Guide to a Healthy Harvest in Record Time. She is also the host of the Orchard People podcast and an ISA Certified Arborist.